Part 18
She proceeds to execute her generous purpose; she covers with earth the mangled corse of Polynices, pours over it the accustomed libations, is detected in her pious office, and after nobly defending her conduct, is led to death by command of the tyrant: her sister Ismene, struck with shame and remorse, now comes forward to accuse herself as a partaker in the offence, and share her sister's punishment; but Antigone sternly and scornfully rejects her; and after pouring forth a beautiful lamentation on the misery of perishing "without the nuptial song--a virgin and a slave," she dies _a l'antique_--she strangles herself to avoid a lingering death.
Hemon, the son of Creon, unable to save her life, kills himself upon her grave: but throughout the whole tragedy we are left in doubt whether Antigone does or does not return the affection of this devoted lover.
Thus it will be seen that in the Antigone there is a great deal of what may be called the effect of situation, as well as a great deal of poetry and character: she says the most beautiful things in the world, performs the most heroic actions, and all her words and actions are so placed before us as to _command_ our admiration. According to the classical ideas of virtue and heroism, the character is sublime, and in the delineation there is a severe simplicity mingled with its Grecian grace, a unity, a grandeur, an elegance, which appeal to our taste and our understanding, while they fill and exalt the imagination: but in Cordelia it is not the external coloring or form, it is not what she says or does, but what she is in herself, what she feels, thinks, and suffers, which continually awaken our sympathy and interest. The heroism of Cordelia is more passive and tender--it melts into our heart; and in the veiled loveliness and unostentatious delicacy of her character, there is an effect more profound and artless, if it be less striking and less elaborate than in the Grecian heroine. To Antigone we give our admiration, to Cordelia our tears. Antigone stands before us in her austere and statue-like beauty, like one of the marbles of the Parthenon. If Cordelia reminds us of any thing on earth, it is of one of the Madonnas in the old Italian pictures, "with downcast eyes beneath th' almighty dove?" and as that heavenly form is connected with our human sympathies only by the expression of maternal tenderness or maternal sorrow, even so Cordelia would be almost too angelic, were she not linked to our earthly feelings, bound to our very hearts, by her filial love, her wrongs, her sufferings, and her tears.
FOOTNOTES:
[48]
----The gods approve The depth, and not the tumult of the soul.
WORDSWORTH.
"Il pouvait y avoir des vagues majestueuses et non de l'orage sans son coeur," was finely observed of Madame de Stael in her maturer years; it would have been true of Hermione at any period of her life.
[49] Winter's Tale, act v scene 11
[50] Only in the last scene, when, with solemnity befitting the occasion, Paulina invokes the majestic figure to "descend, and be stone no more," and where she presents her daughter to her. "Turn, good lady! our Perdita is found."
[51] Act iii, scene 3.
[52] Which being interpreted into modern English, means, I believe, nothing more than that the pattern was what we now call _arabesque_.
[53] There is an incident in the original tale, "Il Moro di Venezia," which could not well be transferred to the drama, but which is very effective, and adds, I think, to the circumstantial horrors of the story. Desdemona does not accidentally drop the handkerchief; it is stolen from her by Iago's little child, an infant of three years old, whom he trains and bribes to the theft. The love of Desdemona for this child, her little playfellow--the pretty description of her taking it in her arms and caressing it, while it profits by its situation to steal the handkerchief from her bosom, are well imagined, and beautifully told; and the circumstance of Iago employing his own innocent child as the instrument of his infernal villany, adds a deeper, and, in truth an unnecessary touch of the fiend, to his fiendish character.
[54] Consequences are so linked together, that the exclamation of Emilia,
O thou dull Moor!--That handkerchief thou speakest of I found by fortune, and did give my husband!--
is sufficient to reveal to Othello the whole history of his ruin.
[55] Decamerone. Novella, 9mo. Giornata, 2do.
[56] _Vide_ Dr. Johnson, and Dunlop's History of Fiction.
[57] See Hazlitt and Schlegel on the catastrophe of Cymbeline.
[58] More rare--_i. e._ more exquisitely poignant.
[59] Characters of Shakspeare's Plays.
[60] _Vide_ act 1. scene 7.
[61] The character of Cloten has been pronounced by some unnatural, by others inconsistent, and by others obsolete. The following passage occurs in one of Miss Seward's letters, vol. iii p. 246: "It is curious that Shakspeare should, in so singular a character as Cloten, have given the exact prototype of a being whom I once knew. The unmeaning frown of countenance, the shuffling gait, the burst of voice, the bustling insignificance, the fever and ague fits of valor, the froward tetchiness, the unprincipled malice, and, what is more curious, those occasional gleams of good sense amidst the floating clouds of folly which generally darkened and confused the man's brain, and which, in the character of Cloten, we are apt to impute to a violation of unity in character; but in the some-time Captain C----, I saw that the portrait of Cloten was not out of nature."
[62] i. e. _full of words_.
[63] Dryden.
[64] King Lear may be supposed to have lived about one thousand years before the Christian era, being the forth or fifth in descent from King Brut, the great-grandson of AEneas, and the fabulous founder of the kingdom of Britain.
[65] She is commemorated by Lord Byron. _Vide_ Childe Harold Canto iii.
HISTORICAL CHARACTERS.
CLEOPATRA.
I cannot agree with one of the most philosophical of Shakspeare's critics, who has asserted "that the actual truth of particular events, in proportion as we are conscious of it, is a drawback on the pleasure as well as the dignity of tragedy." If this observation applies at all, it is equally just with regard to characters: and in either case can we admit it? The reverence and the simpleness of heart with which Shakspeare has treated the received and admitted truths of history--I mean according to the imperfect knowledge of his time--is admirable; his inaccuracies are few: his general accuracy, allowing for the distinction between the narrative and the dramatic form, is acknowledged to be wonderful. He did not steal the precious material from the treasury of history, to debase its purity,--new-stamp it arbitrarily with effigies and legends of his own devising and then attempt to pass it current, like Dryden, Racine, and the rest of those poetical coiners: he only rubbed off the rust, purified and brightened it, so that history herself has been known to receive it back as sterling.
Truth, wherever manifested, should be sacred: so Shakspeare deemed, and laid no profane hand upon her altars. But tragedy--majestic tragedy, is worthy to stand before the sanctuary of Truth, and to be the priestess of her oracles. "Whatever in religion is holy and sublime, in virtue amiable or grave, whatsoever hath passion or admiration in all the changes of that which is called fortune from without, or the wily subtleties and refluxes of man's thought from within;"[66]--whatever is pitiful in the weakness, sublime in the strength, or terrible in the perversion of human intellect, these are the domain of Tragedy. Sibyl and Muse at once, she holds aloft the book of human fate, and is the interpreter of its mysteries. It is not, then, making a mock of the serious sorrows of real life, nor of those human beings who lived, suffered and acted upon this earth, to array them in her rich and stately robes, and present them before us as powers evoked from dust and darkness, to awaken the generous sympathies, the terror or the pity of mankind. It does not add to the pain, as far as tragedy is a source of emotion, that the wrongs and sufferings represented, the guilt of Lady Macbeth, the despair of Constance, the arts of Cleopatra, and the distresses of Katherine, had a real existence; but it adds infinitely to the moral effect, as a subject of contemplation and a lesson of conduct.[67]
I shall be able to illustrate these observations more fully in the course of this section, in which we will consider those characters which are drawn from history; and first, Cleopatra.
Of all Shakspeare's female characters, Miranda and Cleopatra appear to me the most wonderful. The first, unequalled as a poetic conception; the latter, miraculous as a work of art. If we could make a regular classification of his characters, these would form the two extremes of simplicity and complexity; and all his other characters would be found to fill up some shade or gradation between these two.
Great crimes, springing from high passions, grafted on high qualities, are the legitimate source of tragic poetry. But to make the extreme of littleness produce an effect like grandeur--to make the excess of frailty produce an effect like power--to heap up together all that is most unsubstantial, frivolous, vain, contemptible, and variable, till the worthlessness be lost in the magnitude, and a sense of the sublime spring from the very elements of littleness,--to do this, belonged only to Shakspeare that worker of miracles. Cleopatra is a brilliant antithesis, a compound of contradictions, of all that we most hate, with what we most admire. The whole character is the triumph of the external over the innate; and yet like one of her country's hieroglyphics, though she present at first view a splendid and perplexing anomaly, there is deep meaning and wondrous skill in the apparent enigma, when we come to analyze and decipher it. But how are we to arrive at the solution of this glorious riddle, whose dazzling complexity continually mocks and eludes us? What is most astonishing in the character of Cleopatra is its antithetical construction--its _consistent inconsistency_, if I may use such an expression--which renders it quite impossible to reduce it to any elementary principles. It will, perhaps, be found on the whole, that vanity and the love of power predominate; but I dare not say it _is_ so, for these qualities and a hundred others mingle into each other, and shift and change, and glance away, like the colors in a peacock's train.
In some others of Shakspeare's female characters, also remarkable for their complexity, (Portia and Juliet, for instance,) we are struck with the delightful sense of harmony in the midst of contrast, so that the idea of unity and simplicity of effect is produced in the midst of variety; but in Cleopatra it is the absence of unity and simplicity which strikes us; the impression is that of perpetual and irreconcilable contrast. The continual approximation of whatever is most opposite in character, in situation, in sentiment, would be fatiguing, were it not so perfectly natural: the woman herself would be distracting, if she were not so enchanting.
I have not the slightest doubt that Shakspeare's Cleopatra is the real historical Cleopatra--the "Rare Egyptian"--individualized and placed before us. Her mental accomplishments, her unequalled grace, her woman's wit and woman's wiles, her irresistible allurements, her starts of irregular grandeur, her bursts of ungovernable temper, her vivacity of imagination, her petulant caprice, her fickleness and her falsehood, her tenderness and her truth, her childish susceptibility to flattery, her magnificent spirit, her royal pride, the gorgeous eastern coloring of the character; all these contradictory elements has Shakspeare seized, mingled them in their extremes, and fused them into one brilliant impersonation of classical elegance, Oriental voluptuousness, and gipsy sorcery.
What better proof can we have of the individual truth of the character than the admission that Shakspeare's Cleopatra produces exactly the same effect on us that is recorded of the real Cleopatra? She dazzles our faculties, perplexes our judgment, bewilders and bewitches our fancy; from the beginning to the end of the drama, we are conscious of a kind of fascination against which our moral sense rebels, but from which there is no escape. The epithets applied to her perpetually by Antony and others confirm this impression: "enchanting queen!"--"witch"--"spell"--"great fairy"--"cockatrice"--"serpent of old Nile"--"thou grave charm!"[68] are only a few of them; and who does not know by heart the famous quotations in which this Egyptian Circe is described with all her infinite seductions?
Fie! wrangling queen! Whom every thing becomes--to chide, to laugh, To weep; whose every passion fully strives To make itself, in thee, fair and admired.
Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale Her infinite variety:-- For vilest things Become themselves in her.
And the pungent irony of Enobarbus has well exposed her feminine arts, when he says, on the occasion of Antony's intended departure,--
Cleopatra, catching but the least noise of this, dies instantly: I have seen her die twenty times upon far poorer moment.
ANTONY.
She is cunning past man's thought.
ENOBARBUS.
Alack, sir, no! her passions are made of nothing but the finest part of pure love. We cannot call her winds and waters, sighs and tears; they are greater storms and tempests than almanacs can report; this cannot be cunning in her; if it be, she makes a shower of rain as well as Jove.
The whole secret of her absolute dominion over the facile Antony may be found in one little speech:--
See where he is--who's with him--what he does-- (I did not send you.) If you find him sad, Say I am dancing; if in mirth, report That I am sudden sick! Quick! and return.
CHARMIAN.
Madam, methinks if you did love him dearly, You do not hold the method to enforce The like from him.
CLEOPATRA.
What should I do, I do not?
CHARMIAN.
In each thing give him way; cross him in nothing.
CLEOPATRA.
Thou teachest like a fool: the way to lose him.
CHARMIAN.
Tempt him not too far.
But Cleopatra is a mistress of her art, and knows better: and what a picture of her triumphant petulance, her imperious and imperial coquetry, is given in her own words!
That time--O times! I laugh'd him out of patience; and that night I laughed him into patience: and next morn, Ere the ninth hour, I drunk him to his bed; Then put my tires and mantles on, whilst I wore his sword, Philippan.
When Antony enters full of some serious purpose which he is about to impart, the woman's perverseness, and the tyrannical waywardness with which she taunts him and plays upon his temper, are admirably depicted.
I know, by that same eye, there's some good news. What says the married woman?[69] You may go; Would she had never given you leave to come! Let her not say, 'tis I that keep you here; I have no power upon you; hers you are.
ANTONY.
The gods best know--
CLEOPATRA.
O, never was there queen So mightily betray'd! Yet at the first, I saw the treasons planted.
ANTONY.
Cleopatra!
CLEOPATRA.
Why should I think you can be mine, and true, Though you in swearing shake the throned gods, Who have been false to Fulvia? Riotous madness To be entangled with those mouth-made vows, Which break themselves in swearing!
ANTONY.
Most sweet queen!
CLEOPATRA.
Nay, pray you, seek no color for your going, But bid farewell, and go.
She recovers her dignity for a moment at the news of Fulvia's death, as if roused by a blow:--
Though age from folly could not give me freedom, It does from childishness. Can Fulvia die?
And then follows the artful mockery with which she tempts and provokes him, in order to discover whether he regrets his wife.
O most false love! Where be the sacred vials thou shouldst fill With sorrowful water? Now I see, I see In Fulvia's death, how mine receiv'd shall be.
ANTONY.
Quarrel no more; but be prepared to know The purposes I bear: which are, or cease, As you shall give th' advice. Now, by the fire That quickens Nilus' shrine, I go from hence Thy soldier, servant, making peace or war, As thou affectest.
CLEOPATRA.
Cut my lace, Charmian, come--But let it be. I am quickly ill, and well. So Antony loves.
ANTONY.
My precious queen, forbear: And give true evidence to his love which stands An honorable trial.
CLEOPATRA.
So Fulvia told me. I pr'ythee turn aside, and weep for her: Then bid adieu to me, and say, the tears Belong to Egypt. Good now, play one scene Of excellent dissembling; and let it look Like perfect honor.
ANTONY.
You'll heat my blood--no more.
CLEOPATRA.
You can do better yet; but this is meetly.
ANTONY.
Now, by my sword--
CLEOPATRA.
And target--still he mends: But this is not the best. Look, pr'ythee, Charmian, How this Herculean Roman does become The carriage of his chafe!
This is, indeed, most "excellent dissembling;" but when she has fooled and chafed the Herculean Roman to the verge of danger, then comes that return of tenderness which secures the power she has tried to the utmost, and we have all the elegant, the poetical Cleopatra in her beautiful farewell.
Forgive me! Since my becomings kill me when they do not Eye well to you. Your honor calls you hence, Therefore be deaf to my unpitied folly, And all the gods go with you! Upon your sword Sit laurell'd victory; and smooth success Be strew'd before your feet!
Finer still are the workings of her variable mind and lively imagination, after Antony's departure; her fond repining at his absence, her violent spirit, her right royal wilfulness and impatience, as if it were a wrong to her majesty, an insult to her sceptre, that there should exist in her despite such things as space and time; and high treason to her sovereign power, to dare to remember what she chooses to forget
Give me to drink mandragora, That I might sleep out this great gap of time My Antony is away.
O Charmian! Where think'st thou he is now? Stands he, or sits he, Or does he walk? or is he on his horse? O happy horse, to bear the weight of Antony! Do bravely, horse! for wot'st thou whom thou mov'st? The demi-Atlas of this earth--the arm And burgonet of men. He's speaking now, Or murmuring, Where's my serpent of old Nile? For so he calls me. Met'st thou my posts?
ALEXAS.
Ay, madam, twenty several messengers: Why do you send so thick?
CLEOPATRA.
Who's born that day When I forget to send to Antony, Shall die a beggar. Ink and paper, Charmian. Welcome, my good Alexas. Did I, Charmian, Ever love Caesar so?
CHARMIAN.
O that brave Caesar!
CLEOPATRA.
Be chok'd with such another emphasis! Say, the brave Antony.
CHARMIAN.
The valiant Caesar!
CLEOPATRA.
By Isis, I will give thee bloody teeth, If thou with Caesar paragon again My man of men!
CHARMIAN.
By your most gracious pardon, I sing but after you.
CLEOPATRA.
My salad days, When I was green in judgment, cold in blood, To say as I said then. But, come away-- Get me some ink and paper: he shall have every day A several greeting, or I'll unpeople Egypt.
We learn from Plutarch, that it was a favorite amusement with Antony and Cleopatra to ramble through the streets at night, and bandy ribald jests with the populace of Alexandria. From the same authority, we know that they were accustomed to live on the most familiar terms with their attendants and the companions of their revels. To these traits we must add, that with all her violence, perverseness, egotism, and caprice, Cleopatra mingled a capability for warm affections and kindly feeling, or rather what we should call in these days, a constitutional _good-nature_; and was lavishly generous to her favorites and dependents. These characteristics we find scattered through the play; they are not only faithfully rendered by Shakspeare, but he has made the finest use of them in his delineation of manners. Hence the occasional freedom of her women and her attendants, in the midst of their fears and flatteries, becomes most natural and consistent: hence, too, their devoted attachment and fidelity, proved even in death. But as illustrative of Cleopatra's disposition, perhaps the finest and most characteristic scene in the whole play, is that in which the messenger arrives from Rome with the tidings of Antony's marriage with Octavia. She perceives at once with quickness that all is not well, and she hastens to anticipate the worst, that she may have the pleasure of being disappointed. Her impatience to know what she fears to learn, the vivacity with which she gradually works herself up into a state of excitement, and at length into fury, is wrought out with a force of truth which makes us recoil.
CLEOPATRA.
Antony's dead! If thou say so, villain, thou kill'st thy mistress. But well and free, If thou so yield him, there is gold, and here My bluest veins to kiss; a hand that kings Have lipp'd, and trembled kissing.
MESSENGER.
First, madam, he is well.
CLEOPATRA.
Why, there's more gold. But, sirrah, mark! we use To say, the dead are well: bring it to that, The gold I give thee will I melt, and pour Down thy ill-uttering throat.
MESSENGER.
Good madam, hear me.
CLEOPATRA.
Well, go to, I will. But there's no goodness in thy face. If Antony Be free and healthful, why so tart a favor To trumpet such good tidings? If not well, Thou should'st come like a fury crown'd with snakes.
MESSENGER.
Wil't please you hear me?
CLEOPATRA.
I have a mind to strike thee ere thou speak'st; Yet if thou say Antony lives, is well, Or friends with Caesar, or not captive to him, I'll set thee in a shower of gold, and hail Rich pearls upon thee.
MESSENGER.
Madam, he's well.
CLEOPATRA.
Well said.
MESSENGER.
And friends with Caesar.
CLEOPATRA.
Thou art an honest man.
MESSENGER.
Caesar and he are greater friends than ever.
CLEOPATRA.
Make thee a fortune from me.
MESSENGER.
But yet, madam--
CLEOPATRA.
I do not like _but yet_--it does allay The good precedence. Fie upon _but yet_: _But yet_ is as a gaoler to bring forth Some monstrous malefactor. Pr'ythee, friend, Pour out thy pack of matter to mine ear, The good and bad together. He's friends with Caesar In state of health, thou say'st; and thou say'st free.
MESSENGER.
Free, madam! No: I made no such report, He's bound unto Octavia.
CLEOPATRA.
For what good turn?
MESSENGER.
Madam he's married to Octavia.
CLEOPATRA.
The most infectious pestilence upon thee! [_Strikes him down._
MESSENGER.
Good madam, patience.
CLEOPATRA.
What say you? [_Strikes him again._ Hence horrible villain! or I'll spurn thine eyes Like balls before me--I'll unhair thine head-- Thou shalt be whipp'd with wire, and stewed in brine Smarting in ling'ring pickle.
MESSENGER.
Gracious madam! I, that do bring the news, made not the match.
CLEOPATRA.
Say 'tis not so, a province I will give thee, And make thy fortunes proud: the blow thou hadst Shall make thy peace for moving me to rage; And I will boot thee with what gift beside Thy modesty can beg.
MESSENGER.
He's married, madam.
CLEOPATRA.
Rogue, thou hast lived too long. [_Draws a dagger._
MESSENGER.
Nay then I'll run. What mean you, madam? I have made no fault. [_Exit._
CHARMIAN.
Good madam, keep yourself within yourself; The man is innocent.
CLEOPATRA.
Some innocents 'scape not the thunderbolt. Melt Egypt into Nile! and kindly creatures Turn all to serpents! Call the slave again; Though I am mad, I will not bite him--Call!
CHARMIAN.